The Times Union has a nice write-up about a common dilemma that reared its ugly head recently: public schools with not enough money.

While they (thankfully) don’t all look like School #4, just a little under a third (56) of the Duval County School buildings are in pretty bad shape and need to be replaced. 

Jacobs Engineers was hired by the Duval County School board to create a long-term facilities plan, a plan that will look at the useful life of the buildings while taking into account the expected enrollment, major expenses, etc.  The firm continues to gather information.

Some major points and interesting facts: 

• Duval is one of a handful of urban districts that doesn’t have funding from a second source for building costs (that is: sales taxes or impact fees) 
• Charter schools continue to grow in number, which removes students as well as funding from the existing schools
• 129,181 students are enrolled in DCPS Schools (2017-2018)
• Of those, 15,943 attend Charter schools (wow- I had no idea there were that many)

Read about enrollment over at DCPS, here.

Read the Times-Union’s article over here.

Thanks for reading.